--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to a vibrant, phenomenal episode of the Mel Robbins Podcast. Let's do this thing.
--:-- [Intro music fades]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, everybody, I am so excited. Boy, do I have an incredible gift for you today. And for those of you that are brand new to the Mel Robbins podcast, let me welcome you. My name is Mel Robbins. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and one of the most respected experts on change and motivation in the world. And I have a treat for you today because I have arranged to get you an appointment at zero cost with one of the world's leading doctors and medical experts. I'm telling you, you are in for a treat because you are getting world-class medical and research-backed simple tactics today to improve your health, to improve your energy, to improve your vitality. We are going to do some healing today from the inside out.
--:-- Who the hell am I talking about? Well, I'm talking about none other than Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: 14 New York Times bestsellers, people. 14. He's the founder and medical director of the Ultra Wellness Center and head of strategy and innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. Dr. Hyman has also consulted with the Surgeon General on diabetes prevention. I mean, we could just be dropping all—and he's laughing at his own credentials. And that's something that I actually love about Dr. Hyman, because he's relatable. And so we are going to break down the world of functional medicine and the science behind how you can have more energy, how you can use things that are in your house and in your fridge to help you calm your anxiety, to help you gain focus if you have ADHD. And more importantly, I don't care how old you are. I know we got a ton of college kids that listen to this. You should be thinking right now, no matter how young or old you are, about what you can do to make sure that as you age, you also have the energy that you deserve. Right, Dr. Hyman?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Absolutely. Welcome. Thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're welcome. And one other thing I want to tell you guys. So about a year ago, I think you guys know this. I had this like tsunami casserole of a breakdown that was a combination of anxiety, grief, and crushing symptoms from menopause. That's always fun.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Oh, it was a hot mess. Literally.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Literally. And I texted Dr. Hyman and I went to his wellness clinic in Lenox. And so I have firsthand experience working with his team and following his advice. And it has made a profound difference. And that's why I'm excited for you to be here.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Sadly, our healthcare system and our medical paradigm doesn't actually know how to get you from there to here. And it's all about activating your body's own innate intelligent healing systems, which is really all I do. I don't really treat disease. I just help the body do what it's supposed to do by getting rid of the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. So the body is really an amazing organism. It's a self-healing, self-repairing, self-renewing system if you know what to do. And, I mean, who's listening out there that got an owner's manual strapped to their leg when they were born? Probably not too many of you. You know how to use your iPhone and computer more than you know how to regulate and use your body. And that's really what this is all about.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Hyman, you just said something that really struck me, which is that every single one of us, our bodies, has an intelligent healing system built into it. And I immediately thought about the fact that, you know, we all know instinctively that if you cut your hand, your body knows how to heal itself.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Exactly. You don't have to go to the doctor to get a prescription to heal your hand. It just knows what to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah. And so can you just expand upon that for somebody who has never considered that concept that your body is designed when you know how to take care of it to heal itself? What the hell does that even mean?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It's really incredible. I mean, I literally get to be the witness to miracles every day. And people who are either wanting to just optimize our health and live a long, healthy life, or people who have end-stage diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, dementia, whatever it is, ADD, depression, when you know how the body works, you can learn how to optimize its function, which is what we call functional medicine. And then you get rid of the stuff that's impairing our ability to function properly and you put in the stuff that the body needs to thrive. So you take out the impediments to health, you put in the ingredients to health. The body knows what to do.
--:-- Most people don't connect the dots between what they're doing in their life, whether it's what they're eating or the toxins they're exposed to, or the stress they're under, the lack of sleep they're getting, or the fact that they may not move their bodies or learn how to do all these things. They don't know how that's impacting them. They don't know how close they are to feeling good. We're literally only a few days, not weeks or months from feeling better.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We're only a few days away from feeling better?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yes. It's really remarkable. I take people all over the world and I put them in these groups. We do these programs around the world and we change our diet. We move them a little bit, a little bit of yoga, not like running a marathon, but just general exercise, some simple body practices. And within six days, the average person reduces their symptoms from all diseases by 70%.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wait, what?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. I've done this so many times. I'm like, I've been shocked myself because like, well, you have migraines or irritable bowel or depression or insomnia or joint pain or fatigue or brain fog, whatever the stuff you're feeling. And I call it the FLC syndrome, which means you...
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's FLC?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: When you feel like crap. There's a more serious version of that called FLS.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Feel like shit.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, exactly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, and I, you know, what's interesting is that I think about, you know, we're constantly looking at what people DM us and what they fill out in the forums at melrobbins.com. And I've started to wonder if part of the problem is that so many of us are used to feeling like shit.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, we don't know how better we can feel. We don't have any insight because we've never—it's like you have an elephant standing on your foot your whole life. You don't know what it feels like when the elephant gets off until it gets off. And so then people have the insight. And, you know, I've written many books about how to do this. In my new book, *Young Forever*, I explain how to do this. I've written a book called *The 10-Day Detox Diet*, which is really what I used in my patients to help reset autoimmune disease, reset the gut, turn off inflammation, get rid of asthma, migraines, whatever it is. So people are suffering from depression. Because we know now depression is inflammation in the brain.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to go point by point by point because I can feel—can you just hear Dr. Hyman winding up?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: I'm just winding up.
--:-- Mel Robbins: He is so excited. I want to back up a couple steps because we were talking about the fact that your work in functional medicine as a medical doctor, decades of work with patients, of research, the books that you've written. We are going to link to all of this, everybody. It will be in the show notes. Don't you worry. We got you covered. You talked about the fact that our bodies are designed to heal. And so I want to give people a metaphor to start to think about because you've already started talking about food and that we don't stop and think about the fact that the environment that we live in and the things that we stick in our mouth and put into our body and the stress that we endure are all things that we can change for the better. That have a material demonstrated impact on the quality of your health to the point where if you take this seriously within six days, you will feel better.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, what's so amazing, Mel, is that every cell in your body, your DNA, your microbiome, which are the bugs that live in your gut, your immune system, everything is listening to your thoughts. Everything is responding to your environment in real time. We call it the exposome. Your life is not predetermined by some genetic destiny. It's the life and the exposome, which is all the sum total of all the experiences you've had, all the toxins, all the thoughts, all the relationships, all the food you eat, everything, washing over your biology, creating the expression of who you are in this moment. And so that's a very empowering idea because it doesn't just—something just didn't happen to you. You can actually be empowered to understand what those things are and change them and radically reverse your biological age, your health problems, your mental health, because the body has this incredible healing system, as we said.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Okay. So what a good metaphor, and maybe you have a better one, but I keep thinking about like, if you think about the fact that a car, brand new car is designed to drive, right? It needs fuel though. So if you want to take care of your car, you put in the fuel that doesn't have a bunch of crap in it, or you plug your car in, right? And you drive one of these electric cars. I think a lot about food as the fuel. And if your car drives best on electricity or gas, you would never put sand in your gas tank because it would clog it up. And so is that kind of a metaphor to get you thinking about what is it?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It's more exciting than that because yes, food is fuel. It's energy, right? You need it to run your body. But there's all this other stuff in food that we've ignored besides calories. And it's the informational molecules in food. Because food is not just calories, it's information, it's instructions, it's code that upregulates your biology or downregulates it every single bite. It changes your gene expression, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome, literally everything is changed in real time by what you're eating. Like most people don't connect their food and their mood or their food and their asthma or their food and their irritable bowel or their food and their migraines or their food and their depression.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Or food and anxiety.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Or food and anxiety.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Okay. I want to talk about where do we start? Okay. Because I want to make sure that everybody listening leaves with a better understanding of how their body is designed to heal itself and specific changes that we can make in order to activate that power inside of us. And so I want to talk a little bit about, you write so much about food and we've already started talking about it. And in particular, I'm a huge fan of your book, *The Blood Sugar Solution*, which is where I think you're one of the first people to start talking about the vagus nerve and the power of the vagus nerve, which we talk about on this show constantly.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. And *The Ultra Mind Solution* is a book. All these book goodies.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, yeah. All these book goodies. But listen, you know, everybody, and I'm going to have you explain it. You know, you probably, you may have heard that your gut is called the second brain.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But what you may not know is that during the formation of you as a human being, the same embryonic clump that forms the brain also forms the gut and they separate, but they stay connected via neurotransmitters. So I think about it like almost like, like, like goop, like you break goop in half and it's got these stringy sections and part of it becomes your brain. And the second part becomes the gut.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, they call it your gut brain or your second brain.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. And that they talk to each other all the time. And so where I want to start with this is, can you explain the connection between your gut health and your overall health? And then we're going to get into specific mental health issues that people struggle with.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Absolutely. You know, what was really amazing to me, Mel, as I began to practice functional medicine, I began to treat people's guts. I would help their immune system get better. I'd get them on anti-inflammatory diets. And as a side effect, they would report to me that my ADD is better. My depression is gone. My panic attacks are gone. My mood is better. I'm sleeping better. All these things. I'm like, really? What's going on here? And I began to really inquire about this process of how everything below the neck is influencing everything above the neck.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: So the subtitle of *The Ultramind Solution* is how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first. And what's really amazing is the microbiome is this new frontier. In addition to the understanding of the gut brain and the gut nervous system and the brain nervous system and how they're connected, there's constant communication. There's more neurotransmitters in your gut than your brain. But what's now happening is the understanding of this sea of bacteria in there that are all speaking to you every minute. And I just had talked to a scientist who was researching a particular microbe in the gut. And it's a big word. It's called Akkermansia. Don't worry about it. It's just one of the bacteria that lives in there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I already forgot it.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Okay. And what's amazing is as they were fermenting this, growing this bacteria to put in a probiotic, which is very powerful for many things for regulating metabolism and mood and blood sugar and everything. They discovered that this vat of the byproducts of this bacteria was something called GABA. Now, GABA is a calming neurotransmitter. When people take Valium, that's what it's doing. It's activating the GABA receptors in the brain to calm you down and relax you. So when you think if you have the right bacteria in your gut, you're producing compounds and neurotransmitters that are going to your brain and making you either relax and calm or depressed.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Okay. I want to have you define a few things for us. So you've used the word inflammation a lot.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What the hell does that mean?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, everybody knows—
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, everybody does not know.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: You got a sore throat, that's inflammation. You cut your finger, it gets red and pussy. That's inflammation.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Right?
--:-- Mel Robbins: No. I've never thought about it that way.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: You sprain your knee, it swells up. That's inflammation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, that I know. That's inflammation. But when you functional medicine doctors throw around the word inflammation, inflammation here, I don't even know what you're talking about.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: So we know that inflammation on the outside, what it looks like.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Right? That's what I was just referring to.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: But there's inflammation on the inside.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And it's silent inflammation. You know, if your brain's inflamed, it doesn't get red and swollen, but you get depressed and you have ADD and you have personality issues and you can't sleep and you're anxious, right? So we're now understanding that the inflammation, this hidden inflammation is occurring inside of us and it's leading to all the diseases of Western civilization. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia. The aging process itself is called inflammaging, which is one of the hallmarks of aging I talk about in *Young Forever* in my book. And the beautiful thing is that we now know what is driving the inflammation on the inside. What's causing us to have inflammation on the inside? Our gut is a big player.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: 70% of our immune system is in our gut. And if we don't eat the right food, if our microbiome isn't the right bugs in there, they're nasty bugs. And we get leaky gut. And that means the body can't filter out the food and proteins from food and the bacteria in there. And you leak them across the intestinal lining. And guess what? Your immune system's right there. And he goes, holy shit, what is all this? And so it's creating inflammation. So you get asthma or you get arthritis or you get depression or you get diabetes or you get dementia because the gut bacteria and the whole system in there is broken down.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can I ask one more question?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because I think this is really important for everybody to understand. Let's back up a minute and talk about how your gut is supposed to function. So when it's functioning in the correct way, because I only learned about leaky gut because we had a daughter that struggled with disordered eating. And she was constantly talking about how she felt fat. And I thought, oh my God, we have not only this issue with restriction and her not eating, but we now have body dysmorphia. And we went to see a nutritionist that was a functional holistic nutritionist. And she came back and said through the disordered eating your daughter has destroyed her gut. There are no positive bacteria strains. So the food hits her gut.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And without positive bacteria strains, the food doesn't break down.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so she does feel bloated. You get bloated and distended. And then like all of this acidic crap, because the food is not digesting properly because there's no positive bacteria, all this acidic crap leaks through the wall of the gut and then goes through the nervous system and the anxiety spikes. And so this was brand new to me.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So can you just explain to everybody when your gut is in balance, how is it functioning properly? Because I think that'll give everybody the ability to then understand the impact of it not functioning properly.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, I mean, you pretty much shouldn't know it's there. It should do its job, right? You shouldn't be bloated, distended. You shouldn't have heartburn. You shouldn't have gas. You should feel fine.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Really? People go through life without all that?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: I mean, you can have a little gas, but it's not like, you know, that's kind of a normal thing. But I think if people are really noticing their gut function, something's wrong.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And then you just look in the toilet. You should have a perfectly formed log. It just floats a little bit. And that's it. And you should feel the urge to go and you should go and it should take a couple minutes and that's it. And that is not the case for most people in the Western civilization. We know now how to identify imbalances in there. We know how to test for it. We know how to treat it. Not most traditional doctors, but most functional medicine doctors. This is the focus of a lot of the way we help people is by optimizing their gut function. Because when we eat, we're not just feeding us. We're feeding the thousand critters that live down there. There's probably 10 trillion cells in there that we're feeding.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In your gut.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: In your gut. And they affect everything that's going on. If they're the bad guys, you're going to feel bad. And if they're the good guys, you're going to feel good. When you eat sugar and starch and processed food and artificial sweeteners and thickeners and gums and additives, they just destroy the microbiome. So we really have a gut crisis in this country, but we also have the food crisis. And the food crisis is really what's driving it. Change your diet and see what happens. Not for a year or 10 years, but 10 days. Anybody can do anything for 10 days. And when you do that, you literally take away all the potential inflammatory foods, all the foods that are causing you to have issues, which is typically gluten, dairy, sugar, processed foods.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what is the 10-day? Like, just give us simple rules that you want everybody listening to try. This is a dare. Let's go through a sample menu for a day.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: But it's basically protein and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and berries.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, hold on. You said that very fast. Protein. Vegetables.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Vegetables.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Nuts and seeds and berries.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Nuts and seeds and berries. And lots of good fats. Olive oil, avocados. So it's basically breakfast could be, for example, a couple of eggs with sliced tomatoes and avocado with olive oil on top. Lunch could be a big salad with lots of different veggies and tomatoes. I could throw a can of wild salmon on there.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Put in some pumpkin seeds and just lots of good plant food. Very colorful.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Very colorful.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And dinner might be, you know, some piece of fish or chicken or a nice small piece of meat with three quarters of your plate should be vegetables.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Three quarters of your plate.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, so like I'll have like a purple sweet potato. I had some roasted mushrooms. I had roasted eggplant. Whatever you kind of get excited about, broccolini, I make cruciferous vegetables every day.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What did you say? Cruciferous vegetables. What the hell? Cruciferous?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Broccoli, basically. The broccoli family.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does cruciferous mean?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It means broccoli. Basically, broccoli, collards, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, you know, all those. The fiery crap your grandmother served. Is that what you're saying? It's this family of vegetables. It's a super family.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Because it actually detoxes your cells. It helps prevent cancer.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It boosts all the molecules in your body.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I want to stop you real quick because you posted something two days ago.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: I did?
--:-- Mel Robbins: What? It was your cells, your brain cells, like all of this stuff, your skin that all is continuing to grow. It doesn't just grow out of thin air. It actually is impacted and grows from the raw materials that you have. And so would you rather have cells that are made from a bag of Doritos?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Exactly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Or cells made from a salad or a piece of fish. And when you boil it down that way, like, holy cow, what I put in my mouth is what I become.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, absolutely. You literally become what you eat. Listen to your own body. Your body's the smartest doctor in the room. It'll tell you what works and what doesn't. And when you stop this or that, you go, well, God, no, wait a minute. My joints don't hurt. Or wait a minute. I'm not having terrible reflux or heartburn anymore. I don't have migraines. What happened? Or my mood is better. What's going on? It's what you're eating.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Okay. We got to hear a quick word from our sponsors. Hold that thought and we'll be right back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm here with Dr. Mark Hyman and he is talking today all about the fact that we have the power to heal ourselves from the inside out. And we're talking about simple ways that you can do this. All right, Dr. Hyman, what are the top things that people should in this kind of 10 day window, stop eating?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Basically anything comes in a package, can, or box, get rid of it. If it's sugar, no. Sugar sweetened beverages, no. Alcohol, no. The grains and beans for a short time, because a lot of people have inflammation from that. They have a gut issue. Grains and beans are healthy and they're good for you. But for some people, they can be a problem.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's the universal one?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It's no gluten. No gluten, no sugar, no dairy, no alcohol, no processed food.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Do you have any fun?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Absolutely. I have so much fun. I have so much fun every day. Just kidding. My whole life is fun. And I don't feel restricted. I don't starve myself. And the thing is, these foods are addictive, Mel. So people think, I got to have sugar. People are listening. They're thinking, oh, Dr. Hyman, can I have artificial sweeteners or can I have, you know, stevia? Everybody's going through their head. And if you are having this inner dialogue right now, I guarantee you, you have biological addiction to sugar because you're trying to find a way out. You know, I'm going to stop smoking, but I'm going to vape or I'm going to chew Nicorette gum. Well, that's not getting rid of your addiction. And I think it's not your fault. And this is probably one of the biggest problems I have with the narrative in America that we are blaming the person who's overweight for their problem. It's your fault that you're eating too much and not exercising enough because that's the solution to weight loss. It's all about calories in, calories out. It's all about moderation. And if you can't do it, there's something wrong with you. That's just a big fat lie. And that keeps people feeling ashamed about themselves. It keeps them from being empowered to know what to do. It keeps the food industry free of responsibility. And it's one of the most unfortunate narratives that we have.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what you're here to say is it's not your fault because the way that food is manufactured, it is addictive and it is screwing up your body chemistry and it is causing like a whole litany of things that you aren't even thinking that my diet and the way that processed food is getting metabolized, is causing this inflammation that makes my brain not work right, that impacts focus and energy and mood and sleep and all of these things. And all of your work points to the fact that one of the places that all of us can start is by just doing an experiment for 10 days where you stop the dairy, stop the gluten, stop the sugar, and you eat a colorful meal of whole foods and vegetables. Three quarters of the plate is vegetables and have a protein. There is your homework for 10 days and report back, everybody, because you've seen over and over and over again that in that small of a window, people have remarkable results.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. I mean, that's the key. Because if people go, you know, this is a long slog and it'll take me years, you're not going to want to do it. So this is like the restart and has enormous benefits because for the first time, people understand what they're doing impacts how they feel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I almost feel like this is like an oil change. We've got to get that nasty-ass oil out there and glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, get your gut working right. Can we talk about the impact of the gut with anxiety? And what's your recommendation? If somebody struggles with anxiety, what do they need to do to heal their gut? And how will that impact anxiety?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, anxiety can be caused by many things, right? From, you know, life stresses, from trauma, from environmental toxins, from your microbiome, from eating too much sugar. I mean, there's a whole list. So functional medicine is about getting to the root cause.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And anxiety is a symptom. It's like saying you have a headache, right? Well, did someone hit you in the head with a hammer? Do you have a migraine? Did you not sleep enough? Did you have a hangover? Do you have an aneurysm? Like, why do you have a headache?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: So anxiety is just like saying I have a headache. Or depression is like saying I have a headache.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It doesn't mean anything other than what your symptoms are. The question is, what's the cause? And that is what functional medicine is so good about. And so the gut plays a big role. I really just start with the simple lifestyle practices. Do a 10-day reset. Do some simple movement. Take a walk. Do some simple mindfulness practices. Do your high five. I do take five, which is five breaths five times a day. You know, it's simple. Like before you eat, every time before you go to bed, take five breaths in slowly, in and out for five seconds.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How the hell does that help?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It resets your nervous system because every time you breathe, you move your diaphragm. And your diaphragm is this place where the vagus nerve goes through. The vagus nerve is your relaxation nerve. That's your nervous system. You just need to find the switch.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, that's the beautiful thing.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: So you can actually use your breath to reset your nervous system and to calm everything down and lower adrenaline, lower cortisol, lower all the stress hormones and reset your system. But it doesn't take a lot.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to just come back to something you said in the very beginning. Over and over and over again, you're proving simple ways that your body is designed to heal itself.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So five breaths, deep breaths. Walk us through how you do five breaths.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Just go like, take a deep breath in to five through your nose. And five out. Do that five times. It's not that hard.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, but nobody does it. I just did it once and I feel—I feel better too. And again, it's proof that if you do the right input, your body responds.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And this is really what my work is about. It's what my book, *Young Forever*, is focused on. How do we activate our healing systems? Whether you're 25 or 75, you can activate these systems and feel better now and put yourself on the track for a longer, healthier life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Let's talk about ADHD. What did you say?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: ADHD.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I even fell for that. That was good. Let's talk about ADHD and the gut. How is healing your gut helping with ADHD?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: I got to tell you a story. And it was what really got me on this track of thinking about writing this book. It was a 12-year-old kid who had severe ADHD when he was younger. It was in kindergarten on Adderall and kicked out of kindergarten. I mean, who gets kicked out of kindergarten?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Wow. And just struggling at 12 years old. His mother was at her wit's end with behavior problems and just struggling. The mother brought him in and I did a full evaluation because I don't just say, tell me about your ADHD. I said, tell me about your bowel movements. Tell me about what's happening with this and that and the other thing. And it turned out he had asthma. He had irritable bowel syndrome. He had headaches at night. He had muscle cramps. He had anal itching, which is a clue about something.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, okay.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It's often a sign of yeast issues.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. So he had all these problems. And he was on seven different medications from multiple different doctors, on asthma medications, on ADD medications, on mood medications. I mean, it was a mess. I started treating him. And all we did was clean up his diet. The kid was living on junk food, never ate a vegetable in his life, massively nutritionally deficient. He was deficient in magnesium, which caused muscle cramps. He was deficient in zinc because he didn't ever eat any pumpkin seeds or vegetables. His immune system was dysregulated. He had B vitamin deficiencies. He was having gut issues with bad bacteria, gluten sensitivity. He had yeast overgrowth. He had a little bit of lead in his system.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: All this stuff that was really easy to treat. All I did was basically take out the bad food, put in a whole foods diet, a little bit of elimination that we talked about. I gave him basic multivitamins, some fish oil, magnesium, and vitamin D, some probiotics, kind of reset his gut. And the mother brings him back two months later, and she says, not only is his ADD gone, but all of his other symptoms are gone. His migraines, his irritable bowel, his asthma, his skin issues, his anal itching, it was all gone. Congestion, sinus issues, all gone. And his handwriting went from totally illegible, these kids with really bad penmanship, to perfectly legible, perfect penmanship. And I didn't send him to a handwriting school. All I did was fix his brain by fixing his body, by fixing his gut.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm processing this.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, it's a lot.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, no, no, no. I'm processing this because I have a visual to share with you listening to us. And then I want to tell a quick story because I'm starting to feel like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding with our own son. So the visual I want to give everybody, because it just hit me, is when somebody has an allergic reaction, like they get stung by a bee or they eat something that they're allergic to and their face turns bright red or something swells on their body. That inflammation that you're seeing on the outside is the body reacting to something that it can't process or they don't like. What is, what, can you describe what an allergic reaction means medically? Because I then want to tie it to something that I'm now thinking about when it comes to the gut. So what does it mean when you have an allergic reaction?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: You have allergies. I mean, there's really two main kinds of allergies. One is a true allergy. So if you eat peanuts, your tongue swells up, your lungs shut down, you can't breathe and you can die. You get anaphylaxis. That's a life-threatening emergency, a bee sting allergy. That's a certain type we call type one allergy, which is super fast, super quick, and you can die from it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: EpiPen people.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yes, EpiPen people, right? Then there's the delayed sensitivity. It's not a true allergy, but it can create low-grade long-term symptoms. So if you eat bread, you might have brain fog.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Is that a true allergy?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: No. But is it sensitivity? Yes. And I think people don't have... I mean, I know, for example, if I eat dairy, I will get congestion and snotty immediately, and I'll probably get pimples the next day. But if I have sheep or goat products that are from regenerative sheep that have A2 casein, which is non-inflammatory, then I don't. So it's really not so much about the type one we're so much worried about. It's all these other types of food reactions that are slow and delayed and create this low-grade inflammation that creates all these symptoms for people.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. So I wanted to bring that visual in for everybody because I think it's really helpful. And it occurred to me a couple of years ago, huh, I wonder if these sensitivities and these allergies that people have to food that may not cause swelling or redness in your face or breakouts or whatever that you can't see. I wonder if all of this is screwing up the way that our body is able to function.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Absolutely. And it interferes with your body's way to function.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so when you think about it like those kind of type one ones that you just explained, if you have a sensitivity to wheat or your body just can't handle the big company manufactured foods because of the chemicals and the dyes and the crap that are in it, it is causing your whole body to have almost like this reaction, this smoldering inflammation. And so when you think about it that way, it makes so much sense to go, holy cow, if you just simply were to switch your diet from all this processed crap, grab and go, and you were to put on your plate a little bit of protein and three quarters vegetables, it would probably calm your body down and your thoughts down. And here I am going, holy f***, this is crazy. Because our son, exactly what you're talking about, Oakley, in fourth grade was diagnosed with severe dyslexia. The kid could not read. It looked, honest to God, like he was writing with his feet. His dysgraphia was so bad. He could not sit still. So we pull him out of public school and they immediately medicate him for ADHD. He hated the meds, but it was the only way he could sit still in class. Fast forward to about eighth grade, he starts advocating for himself. I'm not taking these meds. I'm not taking these meds. I'm not taking these meds. We're like, fine. But if we get a report from school that you are bouncing around the classroom, we're going to have to find a different solution. This school happened to have a cafeteria where all the kids ate and it had healthy options. There were no unhealthy options. There was the salad bar. There was the homemade soup. There was a protein. He gets into ninth grade. When I tell you this kid is a totally different person, his handwriting is different. That's what made me think of this. His ability to focus is different. He is just, I don't even know who he is. He's destroying it in school. He is present.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And he eats vegetables.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: He has a totally different diet.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like I'm sitting here going, holy s***, the kid used to eat mac and cheese.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Oh yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Chicken nuggets.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: That'll do it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Don't put a vegetable on my plate.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. It's really true. And Mel, it's not just ADD. Everything that goes on in our brain above our neck is governed in the same way. We may not have such severe symptoms. We may not have asthma. We may not have severe ADD, but we may have fatigue or brain fog or just depression or anxiety.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, let's talk about depression because anxiety is not a disease. ADHD is not a disease.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: No, they're just—
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's talk about depression though, because that is technically like a disease, right?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, anxiety is a disease and ADD is considered a disease.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: They're in the disease classification manual. I don't agree. Let me just back up a little bit. We have like 155,000 diseases in our manual, doctor manual, that we can pick from when we want to diagnose somebody. And most of them are just descriptions of the symptoms that people have but tell you nothing about the cause.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So is the root cause inflammation? Is that the root cause of all of this?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: The root cause of many things is inflammation, not everything.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What are the options when it comes to root cause for you as a functional medical doctor?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: So basically at the beginning, we talked about taking out the bad stuff, putting in the good stuff. And the body's not that complicated. I mean, it's complex. It's very dynamic. But basically it needs certain things to thrive and certain things make it not thrive. So what are the things that we need to think about getting rid of that the body doesn't like? Bad food. And we can define that as processed food, sugar. It's stress. And it can be physical or psychological stress. And a lot of stress is really defined as the perception of a real or imagined threat to your body or your ego. So it could be a tiger chasing you, or you could think your spouse is cheating on you, but it's not true. Or you could think that your boss is mad at you. The other few things that cause our body to be out of balance, besides bad food and stress, are toxins. Our gut and microbiome is a huge factor. So an unhealthy gut and bad bugs. And last is things that irritate our immune system like allergens or sensitivities.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, what are the five things?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Bad food, stress, toxins, bad bugs, and allergens.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, got it. And if we have those things, they create imbalance. So we have to get rid of those things, take out the bad stuff. So what are the good stuff? What are the ingredients for health? How does our body thrive?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: We are often deficient in many nutrients, particularly omega-3s, vitamin D, B vitamins, iron, zinc, magnesium. These are common nutritional deficiencies that have broad impacts across the body, including our mood. Then we need the right balance of hormones. We need clean air. We need clean water. We need movement like exercise. We need resetting restoration, relaxation, resetting the vagus nerve. The sympathetic nervous system needs to be calmed down. That's not a passive activity, so you have to actively relax, whether it's breathing or yoga or meditation or prayer, journaling, a million ways to do it. Then we need sleep, and most of us are not getting enough sleep or good quality sleep. Seven to eight hours minimum for most people is essential.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So if somebody is not getting good sleep, you mentioned seven to eight hours of sleep is what the average person needs minimum. What are a couple simple changes that you would recommend that someone focus on immediately to start to improve their sleep habits?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, there's a number of simple things you can do to fix your sleep. One is regular sleep cycle. So wake and sleep at the same time every day.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. How does that help?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It puts you in a rhythm. So your body kind of knows, oh, it's time to eat. It's time to sleep. You're a biological organism, whether you like it or not. And you have to regulate yourself based on circadian rhythms and the basic cycles of day and night and light and dark. The other thing is make sure you have 20 minutes, if you can, of light in the morning.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Because that resets your brain for the day and also resets your pineal gland and will help with melatonin production later in the day.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Which melatonin helps you sleep at night.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And the light you're talking about is get outside even on a cloudy day.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, 20 minutes. And these light boxes, you know, you can use that have full spectrum light. The second is at night, don't get blue light. So wear blue blocker glasses, get off your screens at least two or three hours before bed.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Does that include television or just phone?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: If you want to really do the blue blocker stuff, you can wear your blue blockers while you're watching television. And that's a cheap investment for a good benefit. And that will help your brain start to calm down.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And how does blue light interfere with your brain's ability to shut down and get ready for bed?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, listen, Mel, we didn't have a light bulb until 100 and something years ago. So our bodies are designed when the sun goes down to produce all these hormones and chemicals that help us get ready for sleep.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Another thing you can do is take magnesium. Magnesium really helps with sleep for a lot of people at night. And then the other thing I love to do is a hot bath with Epsom salt and lavender.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why lavender and why Epsom salt?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Epsom salt has magnesium, which gets absorbed in the body. The hot water basically relaxes your muscles and your nervous system. So I can be super stressed. I get a hot bath, as hot as I can stand it. And that has other longevity benefits. And then I add lavender drops, which Johnson & Johnson knows work. The studies have been there because it lowers cortisol. They're using the lavender baby bath to calm the babies down. So lavender drops, you can just put them in the bathtub with your Epsom salt and soak in there for 20 minutes. Go to bed. And as your temperature starts to go down, you'll sleep. Also, keep your bedroom for sleep and sex. Don't have a TV in there. Keep it cool, 68 degrees or lower. Keep it dark. Really important. Earplugs and eye shades if you live in the city or something. But that all helps to reset your sleep system.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right, Doc, hold that thought. We got to hear a quick word from our sponsors and we'll be right back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, I'm Mel Robbins. Welcome back. I'm here with 14-time New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Mark Hyman. He is the voice when it comes to functional medicine. And he is talking today all about the fact that we have the power to heal ourselves from the inside out. And we're talking about simple ways that you can do this. All right, Dr. Hyman, can you tell us about the importance of connection as a way to stay healthy?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Connection, community, love, meaning and purpose. These are all ingredients for health. In my book, I talk about how, for example, if we cured heart disease and cancer from the face of the planet, we'd extend our life by five to seven years. If we cured loneliness and develop connection and meaning and purpose, we extend our life by seven years or more.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So wait a minute. Basically having meaning and purpose and connection in your life is more powerful than curing cancer and heart disease in terms of longevity.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Connection is medicine.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. And I'm sure you're seeing it as an epidemic of loneliness, especially coming out of the pandemic.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Totally. Totally.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: So those are the ingredients for health that we need to provide. And everybody needs different ones. For example, some people might need more vitamin D. Some people might need more sleep. Some people need different kinds of exercise. So it's really personalized.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's personalized, right? Because just talking to the broad audience that's listening, you've mentioned a number of supplements. And it's the same ones over and over. So for anybody listening that's like, okay, I got it. I have to do something. We've already talked about diet and changing your diet. And even just noticing that if you were to remove the things we've talked about and add in this very simple, clean, healthy vegetable forward and clean protein diet in six to 10 days, you're going to feel like a different person. Just try it.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Try it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And then you can decide what you want to do after that. I want to keep eating my donuts. Okay, fine. Then you're going to feel like crap. And if you want to feel like crap, it's your prerogative. Well, I'll tell you something. I am now on, it's like, I don't know, day 30 something of not drinking. It's life-changing.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's totally life-changing. And I cannot believe how much clearer I am. I cannot believe how much more present I am. I cannot believe that I don't really miss it. And I had committed to doing this for almost three months. And I don't know how I'll incorporate it back if ever. Maybe you're in there, but it just was such a profound difference for me that I'm kind of dumbfounded I didn't do this earlier. And so I think you can tell almost immediately, but will you explain to everybody, if you're not currently taking a high quality multivitamin or other supplements, what are the non-negotiables where everybody should start?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: For probably less than a dollar a day, you can get what you need, which is a multivitamin.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And I would say a good one. It's cleanly produced. It doesn't have fillers, additives, dyes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you tell if it's a good one?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: The ones that are manufactured with good manufacturing practices that don't have fillers, chemicals, and additives, that are bioavailable forms of nutrients. So if you stick with certain brands, you can kind of guarantee you're going to get that. Then I think vitamin D for almost everybody. Even in the summer, people are like, I'm taking vitamin D in the summer. I don't need it. You do. Most people, unless they're out there running around half naked between 10 and two every day all year long, you're going to be vitamin D deficient.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's only you. I've seen you in your before and after photos that we're going to link. The dude is tan with the six pack. You're running around getting the vitamin D. [Dr. Hyman laughs] Now, is there different forms of D like D3?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Vitamin D3.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And do you have to take it with something else to be absorbed?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: With fat. You eat with fat, so with food, basically.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. So maybe between 1,000 to 5,000?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: The government guidelines say up to 4,000 is safe. So there's no downside to that. And then fish oil for most people, because 90 plus percent of us are deficient in omega-3 fats, because we don't eat wild food that much anymore.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does the fat do?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: These omega-3 fats are fats we need in small amounts that are what our brains are made up of.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: They regulate inflammation. They are what our cell membranes are made of. They are basically the most critical fats that we consume, and most of us don't have enough of them. And they can treat depression and many mental issues. Even ADD has been found to be helped. Postpartum depression. I mean, a lot of things that we just think, oh, what do we do with these things? But there are great studies that show that these can be effective. So I think that's a kind of basic non-negotiable.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it. So multivitamin, everybody, the D3 and fish oil. What about magnesium? Because you've mentioned it.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, sure. That's my fourth one. But depending on your symptoms.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And how do you know you need magnesium? I don't know. How do I know?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Listen up, everybody. It's pretty simple. If you have anything that's irritable or twitchy or spasmy, it's likely you're magnesium deficient. So if you're anxious, your emotions are twitchy. If you have palpitations, it's twitchy. If your colon's not working and it's spasmy or constipation, if you have muscle cramps, you have eye twitching, any of those things are signs of low magnesium.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm just twitching as you describe those symptoms because I'm like, I promised everybody an appointment, zero cost with one of the world's most respected medical experts and leaders, leading voices in the functional medicine space. My toes cramp all the time.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Why?
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know, everybody's favorite radio station, you know what that is?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: No.
--:-- Mel Robbins: WIFM. What does that mean? What's in it for me?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: What's in it for me? Yes, exactly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So your toes.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yes, my toes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Probably cramp because you have either electrolyte imbalances or magnesium.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Oh.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so if people often don't have enough electrolytes in their diet, particularly potassium. So you can get that from eating lots of vegetables, from vegetable broths, or take electrolyte solutions. But taking magnesium is a huge cure for muscle cramps, and it's particularly foot cramps.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what surprising things cause your magnesium to go down?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: So we should have a lot of magnesium because it's in all foods, nuts and seeds and a lot of plant foods. But we do so much to make our bodies dump magnesium in our urine. We drink too much soda. We have too much caffeine, too much alcohol and too much stress, all of which cause us to lose magnesium in our urine.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How does it make you lose magnesium if you drink a soda?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, it's got something called phosphoric acid in it, which is in the dark colored colas, and that causes you to leach magnesium out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All right. Well, thank you, doctor. Can we talk about hormone imbalance?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yes, we can.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you know if your hormones are out of whack? And what role do hormones play in your gut? And I would love to selfishly focus on women if that's possible.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: So in *Young Forever*, I have a whole series of quizzes that aren't fancy tests. They are literally just questions you answer and you get a score and you go, oh, wow, my hormones are out of whack. Or my detox system is not good. Or I'm way inflamed. Or I have magnesium deficiency. Like those questions I just rolled off about what your symptoms would be. So it's pretty easy to identify what's going on now. Women in particular have way more complex hormonal history than men. Men go through andropause and they kind of lower their testosterone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That sounds weird. Andropause?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. That's male menopause, basically.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what happens when dudes go through male menopause?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: They get low libido, sex drive, trouble having erections, lose muscle mass, get a little more soft and round. Basically, that's what happens. And they get grumpy because of those things. Low motivation, a little depressed. But with women, they go through puberty and then they have their teenage cycles and then their 20s cycles and their 30s cycles and their 40s cycles and then 50s. So it changes. Every decade, women are having changing hormones. And everything happens from PMS to irregular cycles to heavy bleeding to PCOS to perimenopause to menopause. And so there's no one prescription for all of it. But essentially, what we do know is that just like everything else we talked about, the things that cause imbalance in our body that we listed off, the food, stress, toxins, et cetera, and the ingredients for health are also influencing our hormones.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what role do hormones play? So if we had to just kind of even get more basic. What are hormones?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, I mean, I'm serious. Because I think we throw around these terms, but I personally am like, well, what actually, what role does the hormone play?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, hormones are like the communication command and control centers in your body.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I thought the neurotransmitters were.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: They are regulatory pathways that affect your brain a lot. And they do work in other areas of your body. But in your brain, you have something that's like a command center. It's called the hypothalamus.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And this is like radio traffic control on an airport. [Dr. Hyman points between his eyebrows] And for those of you who are not watching this on YouTube, I want you to know that Dr. Hyman is pointing right between the eyebrows.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I think the reason why we all get that scrunchy wrinkle right there is because that is the command center.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, it's a little bit inside. It's like I can't quite touch it because it's inside my head.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, what's it called again?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: The hypothalamus.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hypothalamus.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And that's controlling our sex hormones like estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and so on. It's controlling our stress hormones like cortisol. It's controlling our growth hormone. There's thyroid hormones. All these hormones are controlled by this command and control center. And so what happens, particularly with women, is that they not only have trouble with their sex hormones because of all the stresses and toxins and everything in our life, but they also have thyroid problems, which are really big and often underdiagnosed. And then you get insulin, which becomes out of balance as you get older.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Is insulin a hormone?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Insulin is a signaling hormone peptide made by your pancreas. And that regulates blood sugar in your body, but it also, when it's out of balance and you eat too much sugar and starch, you get this increasing belly fat and weight gain, and that's caused by insulin. So women are subjected, particularly as they get into their 30s and 40s, to this sort of imbalances in sex hormones, thyroid hormones, stress hormones, and blood sugar control hormones, insulin. Those are like the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And so you don't have to treat each one separately. If you do the basic things, you get your lifestyle sorted out, you eat right, you exercise, you learn stress reduction techniques, you get enough sleep, you take your basic supplements, you get rid of all the crap in your life as best you can, your hormones will reset.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What about the thickening in the middle? That's the one that's bothering me. I'm not down with that.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: No, that's not good. [Mel laughs] He just looked down to see the thickening in the middle. I saw that. But that's the insulin part. That's the blood sugar control.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what do I do? Because I'm getting so many people writing about this too, because I've been talking about it. I'm like, this is not fair. I stopped drinking. I have the healthiest lifestyle I've ever had. I exercise every day. I eat the three quarters of the vegetables, clean protein. I get outside in the morning. Like I'm doing it all. Check, check, check, check, check. What the f*** is going on?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Definitely hormones change. So sometimes there's things to tweak. Sometimes there's ways you can modify your diet a little bit or exercise a little differently to regulate this. But it's sort of checking what's going on. Maybe your thyroid is a little off or maybe your insulin is a little higher than you think and you have more insulin resistance. Or maybe you need to increase testosterone because that gets lower too. And that increases muscle mass and body fat loss. So it's like a symphony that you have to be a conductor and make sure it's all playing in tune.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, the visual I got was whack-a-mole. Like the second I hit the insulin correctly, the other thing shoots up.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: No, it's not like that. It's actually the other way. When you treat the root causes, then everything gets better.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So one question for you, if you can't afford to go to somebody in functional medicine to get this all tested, how do you figure out what's going on? Because I know that what's going to happen with this conversation, Dr. Hyman, is that we are going to activate anyone listening to absolutely take the next 10 days of your life and see what happens when you reset your diet and you remove a few things. Absolutely add in those simple supplements that cost you less than a dollar a day and you are worth that investment in yourself and see what happens. Absolutely take the steps to lower your stress and tap into your body's ability to reset, like even just the five deep breaths a day that activate and tone the vagus nerve. But if somebody's going, I want to learn more, what is the next right step?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: That's a great question. And one of the challenges I've always had with medicine is it's kind of a secret guild. Doctors hold the reins. They can order the test or they can't. They will give you the results or they won't. They'll help you interpret them or they won't. And so you're at the mercy of whoever you're seeing. And most doctors do a good job and want to help people, but it's kind of kept in the guild. So in the book *Young Forever*, I do have really extensive questionnaires that allow you to figure out almost 80% of what's going on. And then depending on what you find in those, you can follow up with different kinds of testing. But because of this problem, exactly what you're talking about, I decided to co-found a company with a good friend called Function Health, which allows you, without a doctor's order, to go to any Quest lab in the country, and there's thousands of them.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Get a blood draw of over 100 biomarkers that normally cost $15,000 for $500.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And it comes with a whole interpretive map and framework and dashboard that's filtered through the lens of functional medicine. Get the testing done, get your results and track it over time. And you can see your hormones, your thyroid, your insulin, your age-related markers, your brain chemistry, so much about what's going on with your body.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's so cool about this, if you can afford to do it, and we'll put the link in the show notes, is it's like getting an x-ray of your insides.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And you've already proven to us that you heal from the inside out.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, it's absolutely true. And I'm so excited about this approach because it empowers people to be the CEO of their own health. And the reality is that even if you go to the doctor with all these complaints, they're going to be able to, quote, manage your symptoms. I don't want to manage people's symptoms. I want people to get better. I want people to reverse these problems and not need a doctor. And the truth is most of the things at work are not things you're going to get at a doctor's office, which is drugs and surgery. So sometimes you need them and I use them. It's not a bad thing. But most of the problems we have don't respond very well to that. They just cover over the symptoms. What if you could actually figure out why you're having the problem and fix it?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, I think you told us why. It's inflammation. It's a gut that's out of whack. It is the stressors in your life. It is the toxins in your environment and not understanding that your body has this elegant design that is super intelligent and responsive and can heal itself if you are conscious and intentional about the right input.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And that's what's exciting that's happening now in science is we're actually getting there. Like the old paradigm is dying and the longevity space I've been working in. And when I wrote about Young Forever, where these scientists are now talking about what's underlying all these diseases, these 155,000 diseases, that's not what we need to be thinking about. It's these 10 underlying problems that tend to go wrong as we get older that can explain all disease. And if we treat those, we may not be able to just extend our life by five years by getting rid of cancer or heart disease, but by 30 or 40 years. That means living to be 120 and being in good shape. Like, I don't want to be 120 in a nursing home and a wheelchair. I want to be able to ride my bike, go for a horseback ride, make love. That's what I want to do when I'm 100 or 120.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. I'm glad that you said that because oftentimes I hear the word longevity and I had that reaction. I don't want to be rotting away in a nursing home.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Exactly. That sounds terrible. It's terrible because most of what we see, Mel, in the world is abnormal aging. And we think that's normal. Oh, it's normal to become frail and decrepit and not be able to do what you want and lose function. And the truth is that most of us, our health span doesn't equal our lifespan. The last 20 years of our life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's the difference between health span and life span?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, health span is how many years you're healthy and can do what you want. And lifespan is how many years you're alive. So if you're fine until you're 60, then you get dementia in your nursing home for 20 years, that's not good. So what you want to do is make your health span equal your lifespan. You know, my mother-in-law is 85 years old. She jumps out of airplanes. She walks five miles a day.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There you go.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: She's having the time of her life. She prioritized friends.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Exactly. She is the definition of vitality at that age. And she's like the Energizer bunny. I can't imagine her running out of steam. And that's what I think you're talking about when it comes to vitality. One thing we did not touch on that I know we're going to get a lot of questions on is probiotics. And you've already talked, Dr. Hyman, about the fact that your microbiome is the bugs in your gut that break down the food you eat so it can be turned into energy. And it's these bugs that keep your immune system healthy and that help your brain to function properly. So how do you reset the gut in terms of what probiotic or is there a strain you should take or what should you, is yogurt enough? Tell us what to do.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: The truth is, Mel, that most of what determines the health and quality of your microbiome is what you're eating.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Right? So you need to feed your gut right. You need to tend your inner garden right. And it's not that hard to do. What does it like? It likes lots of fruits and vegetables. It likes lots of fiber. It likes probiotic foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, and things like that. It likes prebiotic foods, which are like the fertilizer that feed the good bugs, things like asparagus, artichoke, plantain, jicama, the list goes on. So we can do that a lot through our diet. And to not eat gut-busting foods, things like tons of sugar, processed food, food additives, emulsifiers, chemicals, all those things damage our microbiome. And then drugs. We're on a lot of drugs. Antibiotics, acid blockers. All these can really screw up our gut microbiome. Drugs like Advil and the anti-inflammatory drugs. So we have to be really smart about taking out the things that bust our gut and put in the things that heal our gut. But the probiotic can be a useful tool, but it's not in replacement of the diet.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So you're basically saying if you eat sugary cereal for breakfast and then you have chicken nuggets and pizza for lunch and then you have like a takeout, whatever, fried, whatever, popping one probiotic is not going to help?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, no.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: And the other thing that's really amazing is that we've learned that they like polyphenols.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What is that?
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: There are a million molecules in colorful fruits and vegetables that are the medicine in food. And these medicines work in many ways in our body and particularly on a lot of the longevity switches. But it turns out that these microbes in your gut like to eat them.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Right. And so remember that weird name, Akkermansia, that I was mentioning?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I forgot it, but now I do.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: But the one that produces this natural volume in your gut. That bug really likes green tea. It likes pomegranate and it likes cranberry. And it likes all the molecules. So you have to feed them. And you have little critters in there. You've got to take care of them. And so food is the biggest solution. And yes, probiotics can help. And prebiotic supplements and fibers can help. But we really want to actually make sure we actually take care of it by eating what we need to be eating. And I had actually horrible colitis years ago from taking an antibiotic that screwed up my gut. And I cured it using a lot of these polyphenols and prebiotics.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. And there's one other thing I want to tell you. Donna, who's one of the producers here at 143 Studios, she has something to tell you, Dr. Mark Hyman. A personal connection that I think you listening, you're going to love this full circle moment.
--:-- Donna: Hi, Dr. Hyman. I am really excited to be here today. And this feels very much like a full circle moment because without you, there's a good chance that I actually would not be here today. About 12 to 14 years ago, I was living with excruciating back pain. I was on meds that are now illegal because they created heart issues. I had really horrible asthma. So even if I wanted to be active, I couldn't, I was wheezing terribly and I was allergic to everything. I was diagnosed with 43 allergies when I was eight years old. So I was just sneezing and wheezing and hunched over all the time. Quite miserable. And then around that time I found one of your books called The Five Forces of Wellness, I believe.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: That was actually an audio program.
--:-- Donna: Yes. So I at that time was divorced. And so I was a single mom and had my son in the backseat and I would play those same four CDs over and over again. And I really needed to hear what you were sharing about how the body is impacted by food. I had never heard any of this before. I didn't realize that I was supposed to be eating greens and I wasn't supposed to be eating all the sugar I was and all the soda I was drinking. And so I changed my lifestyle because of you. And I started to go to the gym. And here I am now, 14 years later, and I have no more back pain. I'm not on meds anymore. I don't carry an inhaler because my asthma is now in remission. And no more allergies. I'm not sneezing. We have dogs here today, and there's no way I could be in this place with dogs around. So I just want to thank you because I've now run 27 5Ks, and I've climbed Mount Washington twice, and I've biked 75 miles in a weekend four times, and I just could not have done that without you. So thank you so much for all that you do.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: That's such a great story. You know, I think it's an amazing story because what you experienced is not impossible to achieve for most people if they know what to do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Donna, first of all, I freaking love you because what just happened here is the mission of this show. It is to truly connect people with the information, the inspiration, and the encouragement that they need so that they can take control of their life.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. And again, what I love the most is that you have said from the very beginning, your body is designed to work on a very simple rhythm to heal itself. And now you know the simple, cost-free things that you can do in order to tap into this magnificent, intelligent body of yours. It's a miracle, really. It really is. Well, Dr. Hyman in the house. Thank you so much. You made a huge difference in my life, Donna's life. I know that this is going to make a huge difference in everybody's life who listens. And one thing I want to point out again is that the whole point of this episode is to empower and educate you about the amazing healing capacity of your body, to introduce those of you who have never heard of functional medicine to this incredible area of research, and finally, to give you things to try. And if you're somebody that's been dealing with chronic illness and some of the stuff that we've talked about today doesn't apply to you, it's really smart for every single one of you listening to just take and try what feels right for you. That's the whole point of this. You are your best healer and your body will tell you what's working. All the resources are in the show notes. And in case nobody else tells you today, I'm going to tell you that I love you.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: Oh, thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm not talking about you. I don't love you. I'm just kidding. But I love you, Dr. Hyman. And I love you listening. I know Dr. Hyman loves you too. That's why I say this.
--:-- Dr. Mark Hyman: It's true. It's really true.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes. And I believe in you and your ability to put this to use because it's going to help you create a better you and that's going to lead to a better life. All right. Go do it. I'll talk to you in a few days. Oh, one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
